Self Reflections

SELF REFLECTIONS These are poems about mirrors, images, self-image, reflections, impressions and self-reflection. Self Reflection by Michael R. Burch for anyone struggling with self-image She has a comely form and a smile that brightens her dorm ... but she's grossly unthin when seen from within; soon a griefstricken campus will mourn. Yet she'd never once criticize a friend for the size of her thighs. Do unto others— sisters and brothers? Yes, but also ourselves, likewise. Reflections by Michael R. Burch I am her mirror. I say she is kind, lovely, breathtaking. She screams that I’m blind. I show her her beauty, her brilliance and compassion. She refuses to believe me, for that’s the latest fashion. She storms and she rages; she dissolves into tears while envious Angels are, by God, her only Peers. Is the mirror unkind by Michael R. Burch To your lovely brown eyes is the mirror unkind, revealing far more than reflections defined in superficial glass, so lacking in depth? Is the mirror unkind, at times, darling Beth? What you see my dear, I see different by far, as our sun from Centauri is just a “small” star, but here it brings life and warms each day’s start. Oh, and a mirror can never reveal a true heart. On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors by Michael R. Burch for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon aka Seamus Cassidy Maya was made in the image of God; may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors always echo back Love. Amen The Mistake by Mirza Ghalib loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch All your life, O Ghalib, You kept repeating the same mistake: Your face was dirty But you were obsessed with cleaning the mirror! Shattered by Vera Pavlova loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I shattered your heart; now I limp through the shards barefoot. Radiance by Michael R. Burch for Dylan Thomas The poet delves earth’s detritus—hard toil— for raw-edged nouns, barbed verbs, vowels’ lush bouquet; each syllable his pen excretes—dense soil, dark images impacted, rooted clay. The poet sees the sea but feels its meaning— the teeming brine, the mirrored oval flame that leashes and excites its turgid surface ... then squanders years imagining love’s the same. Belatedly he turns to what lies broken— the scarred and furrowed plot he fiercely sifts, among death’s sicksweet dungs and composts seeking one element that scorches and uplifts. Downdraft by Michael R. Burch for Dylan Thomas We feel rather than understand what he meant as he reveals a shattered firmament which before him never existed. Here, there are no images gnarled and twisted out of too many words, but only flocks of white birds wheeling and flying. Here, as Time spins, reeling and dying, the voice of a last gull or perhaps some spirit no longer whole, echoes its lonely madrigal and we feel its strange pull on the astonished soul. O My Prodigal! The vents of the sky, ripped asunder, echo this wild, primal thunder— now dying into undulations of vanishing wings . . . and this voice which in haggard bleak rapture still somehow downward sings. Resemblance by Michael R. Burch Take this geode with its rough exterior— crude-skinned, brilliant-hearted ... a diode of amethyst—wild, electric; its sequined cavity—parted, revealing. Find in its fire all brittle passion, each jagged shard relentlessly aching. Each spire inward—a fission startled; in its shattered entrails—fractured light, the heart ice breaking. Wonderland by Michael R. Burch We stood, kids of the Lamb, to put to test the beatific anthems of the blessed, the sentence of the martyr, and the pen’s sincere religion. Magnified, the lens shot back absurd reflections of each face— a carnival-like mirror. In the space between the silver backing and the glass, we caught a glimpse of Joan, a frumpy lass who never brushed her hair or teeth, and failed to pass on GO, and frequently was jailed for awe’s beliefs. Like Alice, she grew wee to fit the door, then couldn’t lift the key. We failed the test, and so the jury’s hung. In Oz, “The Witch is Dead” ranks number one. Mirror by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch My era's obscuring mirror shattered because it magnified the small and made the great seem insignificant. Dictators and monsters filled its contours. Now when I breathe its jagged shards pierce my heart and instead of sweat I exude glass. Polish by Michael R. Burch Your fingers end in talons— the ones you trim to hide the predator inside. Ten thousand creatures sacrificed; but really, what’s the loss? Apply a splash of gloss. You picked the perfect color to mirror nature’s law: red, like tooth and claw. Mending Glass by Michael R. Burch In the cobwebbed house— lost in shadows by the jagged mirror, in the intricate silver face cracked ten thousand times, silently he watches, and in the twisted light sometimes he catches there a familiar glimpse of revealing lace, white stockings and garters, a pale face pressed indiscreetly near with a predatory leer, the sheer flash of nylon, an embrace, or a sharp slap, ... a sudden lurch of terror. He finds bright slivers —the hard sharp brittle shards, the silver jags of memory starkly impressed there— and mends his error. The Poet by Michael R. Burch He walks to the sink, takes out his teeth, rubs his gums. He tries not to think. In the mirror, on the mantle, Time—the silver measure— does not stare or blink, but in a wrinkle flutters, in a hand upon the brink of a second, hovers. Through a mousehole, something scuttles on restless incessant feet. There is no link between life and death or from a fading past to a more tenuous present that a word uncovers in the great wink. The white foam lathers at his thin pink stretched neck like a tightening noose. He tries not to think. Keywords/Tags: mirror, image, images, imagery, self, self-image, self discovery